The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus and method which can be applied to duplicators having a function of translating words included in an image to be duplicated. The present invention particularly relates to an image forming apparatus and method by which, in a case where an original image comprising words from a first language (first-language words) is to be duplicated, image parts comprising words from a second-language (second language words), obtained as a result of translating the first-language words to the corresponding respective second-language words are displayed in the duplicated image.
There are many instances when a person who is reading a document written in a foreign language finds it easy to interpret, the meaning of the document except for a number of words of the document, which words are difficult for the person to understand without using a dictionary. In these instances the entire document or a large portion thereof becomes difficult for the person to understand. In these cases, utilizing an appropriate dictionary may facilitate continued reading of the document as a result of interpreting the particular words by means of the dictionary.
In an example of such a duplicator, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 62-154845 discloses a translation duplicator which automatically provides duplicate image including translation words corresponding to words included in an original image to be duplicated, the document corresponding to one in which an original image was written in a foreign language. In the technology of the disclosed duplicator, an image reading means reads an original image, then a distinguishing means distinguishes information of the read original image so as to divide the information into corresponding picture information and character information, a translating means then recognizing the character information for each character (letter) so as to interpret the character information into a language different from the one corresponding to the original document. The interpreted character information is then output accompanied by the duplicated original image. This technology can eliminate a need for utilizing of a manual dictionary while reading documents written in a foreign language.
Such a technology has problems for a person who has some knowledge of the foreign language concerned. This is because the related automatic translation technology cannot remove all errors from the translating operation, and the cost required to acquire automatic translation capabilities is relatively high. Therefore, such a technology may provide rather redundant functions and may sometimes provide not very useful functions.
Further, outputting all the translation words obtained as a result of respectively translating all of the words of the original image, both all of the translation words and all of the original words being output in a common output image, results in characters of the output image being reduced in size accordingly, particularly in a case where a size of the output image is nearly the same as the size of the original (input) image. Alternatively, a number of pages of the output image may increase, and/or outputting of the output image may take a longer time. Such phenomena degrade the efficiency of operation for processing image information even though the phenomena occurs as a result of translating operations being added.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 64-57369 discloses a translation word outputting apparatus in which each word stored in a dictionary has a corresponding ranking information for ranking the words in accordance with a corresponding part of speech or in accordance with a rank representing a difficulty of interpreting the word, the ranks being selected arbitrarily. A problem occurs in the apparatus in that the all of the in the image words have corresponding translation words, a large storing capacity thus being needed for the dictionary. Another problem is that the relationships in relative locations of the output image original words and the corresponding translation words is not considered enough, as shown in FIG. 6 of the disclosure. Thus, an easy-to-read image is not realized in the output image of the apparatus.